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1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

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Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#191

Post by ratrace »

lukan wrote: post #138
ineedasername wrote: post #92

> Why does 1000 still make more sense? The author doesn’t actually answer their question, unless I missed something? They go on to make a few more observations, and say finally only that the current different definitions are sometimes confusing, to non experts. I don’t see much of an argument here for changing anything. Some non experts experience minor confusion about two things that are different, did I miss someth…

Because it would be literally correct. Kilo means 1000, not 1024.

It would be "literally correct" for you but obviously incorrect to everybody else who has the understanding that a kilobyte = 1024 bytes

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#193

Post by ratrace »

pif wrote: post #52
mc32 wrote: post #16

One thing that annoys me is: Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024 and introduce kilodebyte to mean 1000. Byte, to me implies a binary number system, and if you want to introduce a new nomenclature to reduce confusion, give the new one a new name and let the older of more prevalent one in its domain keep the old one…

> Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024 Because it never did!

Which universe do you hail from? Because nobody except pedants have relented to this demand from non-computer scientists to conform to a standardization that has nothing to do with them or the work they do.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#194

Post by waffletower »

fsckboy wrote: post #184
waffletower wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 7 note scale you suggest (do re mi fa so la ti do) is comprised of different intervals (2 2 1 2 2 2 1) in the 12-fold equal tempered scale. There are infinite ways of exploring an octave in music, but unfortunately listener demand for such exploration is near infinitesimal.

don't you mean 11-fold? ... oh wait, they aren't even consistent

They sum to 12

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#195

Post by bruce343434 »

bloppe wrote: post #83
pif wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.

If Bob says "kilobyte" to Alice, and Bob means 5432 bytes, and Alice perceives him to mean 5432 bytes, then in that context, "kilobyte" means 5432 bytes.

What are the odds of Charlie meeting Bob and Alice?

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#196

Post by array_key_first »

crazygringo wrote: post #188
kstrauser wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you often convert between inherently binary units like RAM sizes and more appropriately decimal units like distances? It would be annoying of one frequently found themselves calculating gigabytes per hectare. I don't think I've ever done that. The closest I've seen is measure magnetic tape density where you get weird units like "characters per inch", where neither "character" nor "inch" are the common units for th…

I have no idea what that is supposed to have to do with anything.

It means that is fine for Kilo to mean 1024 in the context of computers and 1000 in the context of distances, because you're never going to be in a situation where that is ambiguous.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#197

Post by the_net »

Ah, if only I had a dollar for every time I've had to point someone to the a tool like the following when trying to explain the difference between how much "bandwidth" their server has per month (an IEC unit) vs how fast the server connection is (a SI unit): https://null.53bits.co.uk/uploads/programming/javascript/dat...

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#198

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ozozozd wrote: post #182
waffletower wrote: post #103

The author decidedly has expert syndrome -- they deny both the history and rational behind memory units nomenclature. Memory measurements evolved utilizing binary organizational patterns used in computing architectures. While a proud French pedant might agree with the decimal normalization of memory units discussed, it aligns more closely to the metric system, and it may have benefits for laypeople, it fails to accou…

It’s not them denying it, it’s the LLM that generated this slop. All they had to say was that the KiB et. al. were introduced in 1998, and the adoption has been slow. And not “but a kilobyte can be 1000,” as if it’s an effort issue.

They are managed by different standards organizations. One doesn't like the other encroaching on its turf. "kilo" has only one official meaning as a base-10 scalar.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#199

Post by krater23 »

ralferoo wrote: post #163
pjdesno wrote: post #79

I had a computer architecture prof (a reasonably accomplished one, too) who thought that all CS units should be binary, e.g. Gigabit Ethernet should be 931Mbit/s, not 1000MBit/s. I disagreed strongly - I think X-per-second should be decimal, to correspond to Hertz. But for quantity, binary seems better. (modern CS papers tend to use MiB, GiB etc. as abbreviations for the binary units) Fun fact - for a long time consu…

There's a good reason that gigabit ethernet is 1000MBit/s and that's because it was defined in decimal from the start. We had 1MBit/s, then 10MBit/s, then 100MBit/s then 1000MBit/s and now 10Gbit/s. Interestingly, from 10GBit/s, we now also have binary divisions, so 5GBit/s and 2.5GBit/s. Even at slower speeds, these were traditionally always decimal based - we call it 50bps, 100bps, 150bps, 300bps, 1200bps, 2400bps,…

This has nothing to do with the 1024, it has todo with the 1200 and the multiples of it and the 14k and 28k modems where everyone just cut off the last some hundred bytes because you never reached that speed anyway.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#200

Post by tombert »

throw0101c wrote: post #190
tombert wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans. “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.

>> It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish. > All words are made up. Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix > […] as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other. And if they don't?…

I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
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